


“Sometimes you can’t help everybody Doctor”

by asparagusmama



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Atos - Freeform, Brexit, Cameron reforms, Gen, Homelessness, IDS, May govt, Oxford, PiP - Freeform, Political, Tory govt, True Stories, post brexit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 00:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11932905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/asparagusmama
Summary: The Doctor and Romana arrive in 2017 Oxford on a cold and windy and wet 'summer' night, and find the streets full of rough sleepers. They listen to their stories and the Doctor gives money and jelly babies.





	“Sometimes you can’t help everybody Doctor”

The TARDIS materialised down the side of St Mary’s Church off Radcliffe Square, England, Earth, 2017, on a rather windy, chilly, supposed summer’s night. As they left, the Doctor began a lengthy, and rather boring and pointless, lecture on the history of Oxford and its relationship to Cambridge. Pointless as Romana had already looked it up on the data bank and boring, as sometimes the Doctor did love the sound of his own voice. Hence the incredible lengthiness of it.

So Romana didn’t listen, but looked at pretty clothes and shoes in shop windows as they walked up the High. She really couldn’t force herself to listen to his often monologues, there were far easier ways of sharing information, even if he was lecturing on something she didn’t already know. They were, after all, both Time Lords. He obviously needed a new human pet to keep him entertained.

Eventually, looking at a very pretty pink silk shift dress and matching scarf, she noticed that he had stopped, both talking and walking, and was a little behind her. She stepped back from the window to look for him and say him a few shops away, stooped over a young human male curled up in the doorway of the closed shop wrapped up in a sleeping bag. As she looked, wondering why, it started to spit with rain. She walked back to him.

“I’m so sorry,” she heard him say. “I don’t have any currency. I do have a jelly baby. Have one. Take a handful. There’s a good boy. “ The Doctor grinned down at the boy, as he rooted around in his capacious pockets. “Aha! I have this. It’s a gold yoyo.” He bit it. “Definitely 24 carat. There you go.”

The young man took it, speechless, looking at the Doctor half in awe and half in fear, as if he were totally mad.

Which he was, Romana had decided that long ago.

The Doctor wandered on, Romana following, she planning to return once the shops were open. The dresses were rather pretty. “You can’t solve all the problems of the cosmos, you know Doctor? There will always be poor and homeless, everywhere...”

“I knew someone else who said that. Lovely man. Wanted every one to be kind and love each other. First century Palestine, I think... ah. Hello,” the Doctor said to a young man curled up with an older man under a dirty, damp, quilt. “I’m afraid I don’t have any money. Would you like a jelly baby?” The Doctor gave the men the paper bag full of sweets and fumbled his way through all his pockets, frowning. Eventually he pulled off the TARDIS key from its chain, and putting the key first safely in his shoe, which was very bad luck, Romana thought, not that she was superstitious of course, he gave the two men the chain. “This is platinum,” he explained. “It’s all I have. I hope it helps. Sorry I can’t do more.”

They continued up the High and into Cornmarket.

“They’ll only spend it on alcohol or drugs, Doctor,” Romana said primly.

“I doubt it. But so what it they do? If it gets them through a few more awful days of barely surviving?”

“Oh!” Romana began crossly, as the Doctor crossed the road to talk to two young women with three Alsatians who were just bedding down for the night on the pavement. She watched him pet the dogs and talk to them. He found apples and dog biscuits and a paperback novel, but no currency or anything else with precious metal, in his pocket. He said goodbye and walked on. 

Romana jogged to catch up.

The Doctor turned to her. “Fuck it Romana,” he said, stopping at the first ATM he came to and pulled out his sonic screwdriver.

They spent all night distributing cash to the rough sleepers of Oxford, all 72 of them that they found in and around the city centre, each with their own story.

The man with Huntington’s Disease who, on his ‘PIP assessment’ from his ‘DLA’ – disability support of some kind Romana guessed – he had been deemed both capable of looking after himself without support and capable of work. His housing benefit was stopped. His girlfriend taught overseas and was sending him money, but before she could sort it out, his landlady had evicted him, locking his belongings away from him. He could not appeal the decisions of the evil sounding organisation Atos without an address. His walking canes had been stolen his first night on the streets. If he was moved on from the entrance to the covered Market he sat in, he had to crawl. While the Doctor talked to him, Romana rushed off to the nearest kebab van and bought him a lot of food and drink. She also gave him the painkillers she carried for emergencies, she was sure they were okay for human physiognomy.

The young woman, who lived with her partner, but was not married. The government had done a good thing, had made marriage to same sex couples legal (it had been illegal before, how barbaric!) but snuck in the same legislation the abolition of ‘common law’ heterosexual marriage, which meant, that the woman had no protection under law to fleeing domestic violence. She had called the police when she was feeling brave enough, when he had hurt her more than she could bear, and he was arrested and spent the night in the cells while she was in hospital. He was released first and took all the money out of their joint bank account. As she was not married she could not prove it was hers nor afford a lawyer. She could not afford the rent alone, especially with all her savings gone. He would give it back it she lived with him again. She had a dog with her.

The man who had always worked in farming and on the land, who, when his employers went bankrupt, was homeless as he was in tied accommodation. They allowed him to keep the caravan he lived in, but he had no car. He got it to a layby but after five nights; it was firebombed, leaving him with nothing.

The young man with a mental illness, whose girlfriend had been an addict and abusive, who took his money and their daughter, leaving him unable to cope and take his meds, and he had been evicted.

The young woman fleeing her violent boyfriend, crying helplessly as people walked past, saying she couldn’t cope with another night, who had been raped her first night, the previous night, on the streets. Romana was ashamed of herself, but she cried too as she hugged her.

The older man, who had, in the past, had a problem with alcohol, who had worked so hard to get clean, but had been made redundant and could not longer pay the rent. The previous night some drunken students had thought it a jolly wheeze to urinate on him while he slept.

The very young man who had grown up in and out care, but had to move out at 18 and couldn’t afford somewhere to live on his apprenticeship and was not entitled to financial help of any kind with his rent until he was 25 because he had been back with his alcoholic mother the day he turned 18. A man had been walking past every 30 minutes or so for the whole evening offering him £20 to have sex with him. The night before a kind lady had given him an old DVD player and a sack of Disney DVDs, but two hours later he had been mugged and they were all stolen.

The woman who was also fleeing domestic violence, who had up to 10 days ago, had her dog Marley with her, but he had died, and five nights ago she had awoken to a knife at her throat and been raped. The police had taken evidence and let her have a shower, but what was the point; she hadn’t slept for four nights. She had been begging all day for enough for a night in the backpackers hostel, but she had 5p for all day. She thought people must think her a druggie, but she was just sleep deprived. Romana gave her a hug, and the Doctor enough for a week at the Randolph, should she choose to, rather than a night at the backpackers hostel.

The lovely man who seemed learning disabled and so trusting, who had also been told by the evil Atos that there was nothing wrong with him, who, the previous night, had had his quilt and sleeping back thrown into the Cherwell by some drunk students who thought it so funny.

The young couple, who having been evicted after he lost his job because he took time off when his daughter was born, had let their children stay with her Mum, so were not entitled to be housed in B&B with their family. Apparently they should have let the newborn and the two year old sleep on the streets with them for the night, and then they would have been housed, of sorts. They thought they were protection their children, but instead, they were breaking up their family.

So many stories, of people who fell through the cracks, people who lost jobs through no fault of their own, people fleeing abuse and violence, people who had lost parents or spouses who looked after them, vulnerable people, the sick, the disabled, the mentally ill and the learning disabled.

At dawn, exhausted, they collapsed into a early opening little cafe for tea and an egg roll for Romana, a bacon one for the Doctor, and said very little. 

Earlier on Romana had said to the Doctor, “You’re a saint Doctor, but you can’t save them all,” but after the tenth disabled person deemed ‘fit for work’ by Atos or the unmarried woman fleeing domestic violence, or the young person not allowed any help until they were 25 despite growing up in care with no family at all, or had fled abusive parents, Romana had demanded,

“Are you sure this is a fixed point on Earth. These ‘Tories’ sound like just the sort of evil regime we should be over-throwing?”

**Author's Note:**

> Every single story is true, someone over the past few months had told it to me as I stop to chat. I got into terrible debt giving money, buying food, tents, painkillers, but I'm on DLA, I await the transfer to PIP, I had to appeal my daughter's PIP last year and that practically killed me, so I had to stop all but listening and occasional hugs...
> 
> There but the Grace of God go I, we once said, now we, in the UK blame and despise the vulnerable. I feel so powerless I wanted to share some of what I've heard.


End file.
